


i read the news today, oh boy (but i have learned to carry love)

by disheveledcurls



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:38:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disheveledcurls/pseuds/disheveledcurls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She falls into a dream where death is undone and everything’s possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i read the news today, oh boy (but i have learned to carry love)

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: Previously posted on Tumblr. Contains spoilers for the entire second season. Okay, I have no idea how this happened but this started out as ‘okay, I’ll just pour some of my feelings out and write a short thing as therapy and no one has to know’ and somehow I kept writing and writing and writing until I ended up with this almost-4,000-word long monster (for the record, I hardly ever write over 1,000 words, so). I’m talking to you Abi Morgan, THIS IS YOUR MESS. I am still not over the Hour season finale and I probably never will be. Anyway, if you like this, consider it a belated Christmas present from yours truly.
> 
> PS: "Here is the deepest secret nobody knows / And this is the wonder that’s keeping the starts apart" is a fragment from the beautiful e. e. cummings poem "i carry your heart with me."

 

   


_dear girl_   
_how i was crazy how i cried when i heard_   
_over time_   
_and tide and death_   
_leaping_   
_sweetly_   
_your voice_

**your little voice** , e. e. cummings

_your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine_

**poison & wine**, the civil wars

At first, she doesn’t see it.

She runs downstairs and out of the building faster than a bullet and her eyes are dry.

_The time for tears has passed. Go fend for your love._

Seconds later she falls to her knees beside him, like that saint struck by lightning. She’s lost her shoes somewhere along the way, and now her knees are raspy and mud stained. He says one word. He keeps repeating it.

“Moneypenny.”

“Yes. Yes. I’m here, James. “

“Moneypenny.”

She actually looks at him then. They’ve beaten him to a pulp.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God-”

“Miss, we need you to move now-“

“Shut up.” She doesn’t know whether she’s talking to them, to him, or to Kiki three hours ago. _Cilenti’s got him_. All she could think then was _no,_ a tiny, terrified _no_. She looks at his body again, flesh torn open, bones most likely broken, and something inside her cracks and snaps in half and she can’t breathe, can’t breathe for him.

“Oh God-”

“Miss-“

“Moneyp-“

“Please shut up-”

She hears footsteps. Someone’s running. _Is it me again? Am I saving him?_ The voices around her suddenly fade into a low background noise and she devotes every second of her attention to the man lying on the grass beside her.

“Moneypenny”.

Her hands fly to his and she feels his wrist for a pulse. “I’m here. I’m here.” There’s nothing else she can think of. There’s nowhere else she could be.

Someone touches her shoulder and she nearly jumps out of her skin. Lix drapes a coat over her, says “They have to take him, dear. You have to let them help him.”

Before she can find the words to tell her there’s no way on Earth she’s letting him out of her sight, something to her left moves. Faintly, his thumb rubs against the back of her hand and she leans forward. Her hair comes loose and falls like a curtain covering the side of his face and before she can stop herself, she’s crying again and wiping at the tear tracks on his face.“Don’t you dare. Don’t you bloody dare”, she says uncontrollably in response to nothing in particular. Amidst the disfigured mess his face is, one corner of his mouth tugs up and it’s infuriating that he would smile in a moment like this.

 _You’re im-po-ssi-ble._ _You are possible with me._

“Moneypenny.”

“James.”

His gaze is calm (as if all he ever wanted from life were a) to die a hero; b) for her name to be his final word). Hers is desperate. _Live for me. Live for me or else-_

“Darling.” Without a warning Lix pulls her back from his grasp, and four men seize the moment to place him on a stretcher and carry him off to the ambulance. Astonished, she lets Lix pull her to her feet and walk her to a car. Absent-mindedly she knows that they’re moving, that Hector’s driving them somewhere. Lix in the passenger seat gives him directions. Marnie sits on one side, a hand on her shoulder, and Randall on the other, fiddling with his tie.

They pull up at the hospital. She takes two wobbly steps before she sees it. Her hands are redder than her dress. She sees again the grass around him, red. She sees her knees, red with blood and brown with mud. She brings her fingers to her nose, to her lips. Iron. Blood. It hits her. _His_ blood, under her fingernails. She realizes, with a kind of half-hysterical, half-detached determination, that if such things can happen then perhaps she’d rather not exist in this world anymore. Her eyes roll backwards, her stomach turns, her knees bend and she hits the ground. 

_If I am Juliet bring me my happy dagger._

* * *

She falls into a dream where death is undone and everything’s possible.

It’s a very simple, quiet dream: they’re at his house and she sits on the floor by the mattress he calls bed and she watches him wake. She waits, he wakes, he falls back asleep and everything begins again. Then she realizes time must be passing by, because every time he wakes the lightning in the room is different. Sometimes he opens his eyes and smiles like she holds the sun in place. Sometimes he takes her hand in his and kisses every fingertip. Most of the time she just sits there and feels immensely happy for no particular reason other than knowing he’s breathing by her side.

It is the best dream she’s had in months.

 

* * *

 

 

When she wakes up, she’s sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in a blue room she doesn’t recognize. To her left she finds Lix, chain-smoking by an open window and watching her. In front of her, Hector and Marnie are leaning against the wall side by side, looking like they’re dead on their feet. 

“How did I get here?” She remembers falling.

“You fainted. We brought you inside. You screamed-”Lix stops to put out her cigarette, but her voice betrays no feeling other than exhaustion. “You wouldn’t stop and we suggested the doctor gave you a sedative and let you stay in here, with him. We said we’d make sure you didn’t do anything mad.”

There is no resentment in Lix’s voice, but she takes the hint. They’ve been here all night for her. God knows what they’ve seen her do or heard her say in dreams. Dawn is already making its way through the blinds. “I’m so sorry”, she says. “Please go home. I -I can manage on my own.”

Lix shakes her head. “Hector, take your wife home. Randall and I’ll stay with her.“

Hector nods. He tries to appear confident that things will be okay, and Marnie hugs Bel briefly before they leave, whispers _Don’t give up on him._

“I’ll go get something to eat”, Lix says as she’s making her way out. “We’ll be just outside-”.

“Thank you”, Bel interrupts, knowing she ought to say this. “For everything.”

Lix nods, closes the door behind her.

She turns to her right and moves her chair closer. He’s sound asleep, his face covered in bruises and bandages, her hand in his and their hands on his chest. The steady drumming of his pulse in the places where their fingers are entwined is maybe the most wonderful thing she has ever felt. Someone’s crying _Am I dreaming again?_ _Is it me?_ She finds herself climbing into the bed beside his small frame and laying her head on the spot where his mad heart is still beating under scarred flesh. This is just to be sure that he is indeed alive. This is just to whisper against his skin: _You will not die today, or tomorrow, or the day after_. 

 (Today she acquires the habit of falling asleep with her head on his chest. It is a habit she will never be able to shake off. It becomes impossible for her to fall asleep otherwise.)

 

 

* * *

 

She calls his wife, explains in a shaky voice what happened to him. She feels the loaded silence stretching across land and sea.  

“I’m sorry”, the other woman says. “I can’t – I won’t go back.”

“But you’re his wife.“

“I told you to take care of him,” Camille spits out, and hangs up.

Bel gasps as if hit by a cannonball, leans back against the wall for support. _It’s what you both want._

She feels utterly useless.

(In the end Camille does come back, two weeks later, but not for him. She comes as a part of a French anti-nuclear protest, visits him briefly, retrieves her things and leaves for good. “I wish I’d never met him”, she tells Bel, “but I wish you both the best.”)

 

* * *

 

 He wakes up on the third day, as if role-playing resurrection. (It is for sure _her_ resurrection.) His left eye has not yet healed, but the other searches round the room and finally lands on her.

“Well.” His voice is hoarse and quiet. “Have I been very good?”

“What?”

“To find you here in my bed, I mean. “

Of course he would joke in a moment like this. She has to hold back the urge to simultaneously slap and kiss him.

_You almost died._

“You’re infuriating.”

“So I’m told,” he smirks, and then, noticing. “You’re shivering.”

She wants to say so much. She wants to do so much before somebody comes with the horrible news that she’s been hallucinating all along and he didn’t actually make it. Instead, she lets him wipe her tears away and hold her for hours. There is nothing else she can think of. There is nowhere else she could be. There is no choice but to stay even if she can barely keep herself together.   

  _I am leaping. I promise you that this is leaping._

 

* * *

 

His broken body is healing. His mind isn’t quite there yet. He has nightmares. She ends up spending every night at the hospital, because sometimes he falls into the restless illusion that they’ve got him again, that this time they will finish him off. When his heart under her ear starts hammering, when he shakes, she knows the night terrors have begun.

“They’re not real, I’ve got you,” she says. “They’re not here, _I_ am.”

There’s no one else she needs to be right now but the woman who gets to glue him back together. Yet it’s like sleepwalking – he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not, what’s past and what’s now. He calls for her as if she weren’t next to him. His voice breaks and she knows he’s back in that room, being stomped on. This panic is the trickiest, most dangerous part - if she looks down at her hands now, she’ll see the blood again and descend into madness. Most times, though, she manages to keep her voice firm, to bring him back. (Sometimes she doesn’t and strangely, it is her tears that startle him into consciousness, as if her pain were the tell-tale sign of a nightmare. _We’re still here_ , he’ll say then, whisper it against her eyelids, against her wrists. _There is no blood. We’re still here._ As usual, they patch each other up as best as they can.)

They get almost no sleep at all. He keeps himself awake until she arrives from work and then she reads to him until dawn comes _.   Here is the deepest secret nobody knows. And this is the wonder that’s keeping the starts apart._ And this is how she saves him.

 

* * *

 

Later –it may be the same day, or the following week, she’s not sure- it is dusk, and she thinks it is time to have an actual conversation.  She wakes him up. A nurse comes in carrying a tray with a bowl of hot soup. “Dinner”, she says. “You’d better eat it. You ought to put some meat on those skinny bones.”

 “Yes, ma’am.” He nods politely, and the woman leaves. Bel shoots him a look. “What?”, he says. “The nurses have grown quite fond of me.”

“Of course, James. Who could resist your never-ending charm-”

“-and my dazzling looks? Oh, hardly anybody,” he says with the bored arrogance of an aged ladies’ man, and they both laugh for what feels like the first time in years.

“Are you going to baby-feed me?”

“In your dreams.” She shakes her head, but moves closer in case he needs help.  “Wait-“

He puts down the spoon. “What is it?”

“I could kill him”, she blurts out. This isn’t really the part she wanted to start with, but there’s so much to be said and she’s never been good with words anyway. “I could make my way into that prison, find his cell and take a steak knife and just chop him into little pieces for what he did to you.” Her voice is cold and hard but her hands are shaking. He reaches out to soothe her, but she recedes. 

“I hate you,” she says then, her voice cracking _. You almost died_. “I was terrified and I bloody _told_ you not to go there alone and I thought I’d lose you-”

“I’m sorry”, he says, holding her stare.

She goes on. “You’re the most maddening, stubborn, idiotic person in the world. “

_There are life’s natural heroes and then there’s you. Your words._

“Yes.”

“You go and kiss me and then practically get yourself murdered. Who does that? What kind of best friend are you? Don’t smile – oh God, I will actually strangle you.”

(He smiles because there are teardrops hanging from her eyelashes but her eyes say _possible_ unconditionally.) “Moneypenny.”

“What?”

“Is that all? May I say something?”

“As if there was anything you could say in your defense-”

 He tugs at her fingers until she’s sitting on the bed beside him and fixes his unyielding, earnest eyes on hers so she’s caught in one of those moments of sheer truth with him.

“I’m sorry it was such a disaster, but you know I had to go. You know that’s what we do. We chase the story wherever it leads us- “

“No, we don’t. Not like this. Not when the risk’s so great.”

“Of course we do,” he rebuffs. “That is why we’re so damn good. That is why our show is the hour that you can’t miss.”

She looks away. She feels like the wife of a prophet being told: _You will lose him – once and again and again. He’s not in the business of making friends._ She wonders whether this is going to be her life forever – the thrill of the chase followed by crying in darkened offices, waiting in hospitals, being terrified that the next phone call will say there is no hope.

“I wish you were a coward”, she says after a moment. “It’d make this so much easier.”

“But so dull”, he comments, and she hates how right he is. (If she were given the choice she’d always choose this: holding his hand as he hunts for truth and dashes headlong into danger, picking up his pieces, working together to tell the stories that matter). 

“It’s not like I was enjoying myself”, he says, attempting to get his point across. “If you think for a moment that I was not scared, or worried-“

“I never said that-”

“It was awful.”He looks away. “I knew that they’d kill me, and yet losing you was worse than dying,” he says in all seriousness, re-living that crushing defeat. Her hand flies to his chest –making sure, always making sure- and he breathes again. “But since I’m still alive despite their best efforts,” he says with a grim smile ,”apart from your righteous rage, may I be forgiven?”

 She’s so lost in the blue of his eyes she thinks she’s missed the question. Someone’s breathless. _Is it me?_ His fingertips brush, tentative, against her forearms. “Moneypenny?”

“You’re lucky I’m so bloody in love with you”, she snaps.

He smiles like a child on Christmas Day. “Does that mean –“

 “It means _yes_ , James, and for the love of God don’t wear it out.” There’s nothing else she can tell him. There’s nowhere else she’d rather be. There’s nothing else to do but hold his hand and leap.

 

 

* * *

 

 Months go by, and luckily, there are no unwelcome comments about her new habits. Not even Lix says a thing about her evident lack of sleep and constant fatigue: she simply keeps her whiskey bottles at hand, and offers a helping hand when it is needed. She does not appreciate Hector’s sympathetic looks, but she sometimes phones Marnie, who, in an amazing turn of events, has taken to keeping Freddie company from time to time, telling him about the upcoming Madden firstborn and her redecorating projects.

“But how do you make him behave?!”, Bel enquires. “You have a power I can only dream of!”

Marnie laughs. “I see it as training for when the baby comes. If he is a true Madden he’ll be a handful.”

She is grateful for Marnie.  She is grateful for Isaac –who, with Freddie’s directions, pursues one brilliant story after another- , for Sissy –who always has a kind word for her and a coffee cup at the ready-, Lix –without whose help she couldn’t possibly make the show work when her mind’s elsewhere-, for Hector’s energy and charm, and even for Mr. Brown’s decision to overlook her clearly unprofessional behavior. Yet all these people share a crowded second place in the list of thinks she thanks God for, the first one being the miracle of her best friend’s life (saved against all odds as if by the magic of a true love’s kiss) and their second chance. She finds being brave is not impossible. She kisses him on the cheek, misses him while she’s gone, and realizes that in fact, it gets easier by the day. She thinks, _We could have been a Greek tragedy but I won’t let us._

They are living as lovers, almost lovers anyway. Not that she wouldn’t want to. Not that she’ll acknowledge it. They will always be walking on the tightrope between fury and desire, but it’s a bit early to admit they’ve fallen over. (She sleeps in his hospital bed every night now, and he holds their hands pressed to his heart. They will not speak of it. There is no need. This is, more or less, what they’ve always wanted, and when in dreams he whispers poetry against her forehead, she does not complain.)

When he has to practice walking, she offers her outstretched arms.

“Lean on me, James,” she says, all charm. “I’ll walk with you.”

* * *

 

_soldier come home to me, you’ve been away so long_

**a spell a rebel yell** , coldplay

 

 

On the day he is discharged from the hospital, she takes him to her office, shows him the letters. She stands beside him and fidgets as he reads. It feels like open-heart surgery.   _And maybe your courage will make me brave too_. Easier said than done.

“You’re too kind”, he mutters after a while. She knows what part he’s referring to.

“What I am is a bloody coward-“

“I won’t let you say that-”

“It’s the truth, Freddie.” She bites her lip. She is not going to cry today of all days. “The truth, finally. You are the bravest person I’ve ever known, and I am sorry that you’ve wasted years of your life waiting for me to do something.”

“Nonsense.  Any moment without you would have been a waste.”

She shakes her head and starts to protest, but he touches her shoulder and stares. “Listen to me, I don’t care about the stupid trip, or my stupid marriage. I don’t care that you didn’t write back. I would do it all over again-”

“That’s ridiculous-“

“Remember our first day here? That deaf secretary that couldn’t get our names spelled right? And that despicable man who tried to discourage you from doing the interview because he felt a BBC newsroom was no place for a respectable woman? That women weren’t ‘intellectually suited’ for journalism?“

She remembers. She pulls the memory from a mind-drawer she hadn’t visited in a long time. “You said ‘Pff, what does he know? He probably hasn’t seen a woman in his life’ and other horrible things that made me laugh until I felt better. Then you said, ‘Go in there and prove them wrong’.”

“And you did.”

“And I did.“ She smiles.

“And when you came out of his office all triumphant like a goddess of victory I said-“

“’May I be your best friend, Miss Rowley?’” For a moment she sees him standing in front of her, ten years younger, with that black leather jacket he used to wear and a hopeful look in his eyes.

“And you said yes, not knowing what you were getting yourself into.” He laughs. “My point is, if I could turn back time I would still ask you.”

She throws her arms around him. _Why should I expect any less than fearlessness from you?_    “I would still say yes.”

“Does that mean-“, he pulls back a bit to look into her eyes. “Is it possible - now? “

This is the moment she’s feared. This is the moment she’s dreamed of. “It is. It is. It has always been. It always will be.”

“Good, because I’ve wanted it to be since we first met. Even while I was saying horrible things about BBC employees I was hoping it would be- ”

She laughs. “You liar. I’m sure being so wicked required your undivided attention-“

 “May I kiss you?”, he says suddenly, and cups her face in his hands. “I really want to. I always want to.“

She smiles like she did the first night she was possible. _We talk too much._ She leaps.

 “You may”, she says, lit like her yellow angle-poise lamp.

 

 

* * *

 

 Then one day she stops looking away when he says beautiful things. She stares right back -beaming like the sun, perfect like a rose, exquisite- and he knows it’s time to be fearless again and give her his mother’s ring.

“I don’t want you to give up on anything, “he says. “I just want to be your husband.” Plain and straightforward and honest, her boy. There is no need for speeches anyway – she could recite a number of little moments that said just the same in other words. She stops him from kneeling because his left knee is still not doing that well, so he just stares into her eyes and smiles, his right arm outstretched, a silver ring on his open palm.  “Will you marry me?”, he asks, quiet and hopeful like the first day of spring.

This time, she has a good reason for shivering.  “I love you”, she says. It feels good. She’d been so afraid to say it but the words are like honey. “Quite a lot. So yes, I will.”

She is so proud of the smile he smiles then, huge and shy and unapologetically triumphant. He slides the ring on her slender finger, and kisses her hand, her neck, her mouth until they’re both breathless.

_And we’d be happy?_

_Ecstatic. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else._

(She believed him then and she believes him now.)

“You’ll see, Moneypenny”, he says. “We’ll be so great together we’ll make the Maddens jealous.”  They walk out of her office (arm in arm, because he still needs to lean on her) and head toward the studio where this week’s program is yet to be recorded and their colleagues await.  “Make way, make way”, Freddie exclaims like a medieval bard as they go, “make way for the BBC’s new golden couple!”

Bel laughs. Absolute love or utter fury, there’s only ever been him, and she can’t wait to prove it.

 

 


End file.
